


Taking Cover

by SylvanWitch



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Threesome, minor original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 02:58:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t like Nate to force an issue except when it’s very clear that the need outweighs the cost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Cover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chemm80](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemm80/gifts).



> This is a gift for chemm80, without whom I probably would never have been introduced to _Generation Kill_ and its wonderful fandom. We were recently lamenting the under-representation of Brad/Nate/Ray in fanfiction, and I wanted to remedy that in some small way. For the record, I intended this to be filthier than it turned out to be.
> 
> Also, any similarity to actual persons is entirely the fault of the writers, directors, and producers of GK, who did a fabulous job of bringing real life people to the fictional small screen. I'm treating the characters as characters. No disrespect to real people is intended.
> 
> On that note, the timeline here is my own. It implies that Brad goes off to war again without Nate and Ray.

The hotel is nondescript, a middle value chain with a hundred and twenty rooms on a dead end road full of such places.  It’s discreet.  Anonymous. 

  
Brad appreciates the effort.

 

The man at the registration desk looks up with an automatic smile that grows genuine as he takes in the sight of Brad in his dress uniform, minus the hat, which he’s left on the passenger seat and the sword, which he’s locked in the trunk of the rental to keep people from growing uneasy.  “Hello, My Name is Mark” has floppy blonde hair, a small gold hoop in each ear, and teeth whiter than Rudy’s.  His fingers brush Brad’s unnecessarily as he hands over the key card, and Brad makes careful eye contact of the kind that says, “No thanks.”

 

The plastic smile is back as he tells Brad about the fitness center, pool, complimentary breakfast, and business center.

 

Brad nods and picks up his duffle.  He doesn’t need any of those things.

 

The room is decorated like they all are, industrial patterned carpeting and prints with matte borders to match the bedspread and fabric of the reading chair.  He drops the duffle next to the mini-fridge and sits down carefully on the edge of the bed.  He wants to let go of the tension across his shoulders, drop his head, release the iron grip he has on his muscles, but he can’t.

 

He waits, posture perfect, not wanting to crease his dress pants or require his shirt to need ironing.  

 

It’s not laundry he’s really worried about, though.

 

He’s expecting the knock, but when it comes, he feels his heart stutter painfully in his chest, brushing an electric current down his arteries and veins.  Brad takes a deep breath, stands, hands clenched at his side to keep them still, and tells himself to man the fuck up.

 

Nate is dressed in khakis, a polo, a light leather jacket, and his hair is longer than regulation but of course neat.  His lips quirk up into a half-smile, maybe gauging Brad’s mood, maybe unsure of how to proceed.  Brad watches Nate scout the situation, assess the threat, sees him decide that things are under control, that the area is clear.

 

Then Nate spends a solid minute on the threshold, door open for the world to see him, looking at Brad, eyes sliding from his face to his shoulders, down his belly, tracking lower, tightening Brad’s breath with the deliberate way Nate uses his gaze.  When Nate’s eyes return to Brad’s own, he sees heat in them, heat and something else, something biding and patient.

 

Brad steps aside with a gesture of welcome and Nate brushes past him, the hallway too narrow for them both, even with Brad’s back to the wall beside the door.

 

“Heard from Ray?” Nate asks as he looks around the room, peeks into the bathroom, closes the curtains and turns on the light in the corner, over the chair.

 

“Yeah,” Brad whispers, clearing his throat and trying again.  “Yes.  He should be here shortly.”

 

“Good,” Nate says, sitting down in the reading chair.  “I’m glad we have some time alone.”

 

And Brad’s not sure how to take that, as an invitation or a threat.  Because if Nate wants to get naked, that’s a plan he can get behind.  But if Nate expects him to talk…

 

“How’ve you been?” 

 

From anyone else it’d be a stupid question generated by nerves, but Nate’s serious eyes are on Brad’s face, his expression saying, _I asked a question and I expect an answer, Marine._

 

Brad delays, taking his time to walk around to the far side of the bed and sit down facing Nate, still careful of his trouser crease and the line of his jacket.  He should’ve taken it off, all of it.

 

Nate’s got the patient expectation of a sniper sure of his target, though, and Brad can’t escape him.

 

“Better,” he gruffs, running a hand over his face, hiding behind the gesture.  He recognizes what he’s doing—pussying out, trying to evade Nate—and ordinarily he’d be pissed at himself for it.  Today, though, he’s just tired.

 

“I’ve been better,” he clarifies after a pointed silence.  “I—.” 

 

What can he say, really?  

 

Hedley was alive and now he’s dead and Wanamaker will probably never walk again and Hastings is in a coma.  Brad’s got a comma-shaped suture scar over his left eye, a pockmark in his neck a half-inch from his carotid, where they’d pulled a piece of Hedley’s skull from his flesh, and no fucking idea what to say.

 

“Hey,” Nate says then, leaning forward, telegraphing his intention before laying his hand firmly on Brad’s knee.  “You’re alive.  You’re here.”

 

Under the heat of Nate’s hand, the solid weight of it, Brad feels present in the moment in a way he hasn’t since the last time Nate touched him with intent.

 

“I was bleeding into the snow eight days ago.  Four days ago, I was on a plane.  Yesterday, I was putting Hedley in the ground.”

 

He didn’t mean to say it, sure as Ray’s a whiskey tango fuck didn’t mean to make it sound like he was asking for something, but Nate doesn’t blink, only slides from the chair onto his knees between Brad’s legs, hipping them apart to get closer, and then fastens his lips over the puckered mark where Brad had narrowly missed a grave of his own and sucks.

 

He can feel his pulse beating against Nate’s hot mouth, feel Nate’s tongue roughing over the wound like he’d erase it from Brad’s skin, feel the strength of Nate’s hands where they brace against Brad’s thighs.  

 

Which is naturally when there’s a knock at the door in the time-honored “shave and a haircut” pattern.

 

Nate laughs, a wet burst of sound that vibrates against Brad’s Adam’s apple, and rises gracefully to get the door, trailing his hand over Brad’s shoulder as he goes.

 

Brad stands up and rounds the end of the bed, pacing out the breadth of it before stopping.  There’s no dignity in retreating into the bathroom, even if his belly is suddenly full of slithering cold that tries to wrench a shiver out of his spine.

 

 _This is Ray, for fuck’s sake_ , he reminds himself, but it doesn’t seem to matter to his guts.

 

“Jesus, you look like someone parked a Victor on your puppy,” Ray observes by way of greeting, and Brad finds himself smirking at the familiar tone.  The smirk slips when he catches Ray numbering his new scars, sees the way Ray’s eyes skitter away from his throat, the way Ray swallows unnaturally around what he was going to say next.

 

Brad reaches out a hand and hooks Ray into him, and Ray gives a mocking yelp of protest before wrapping his arms around Brad and smacking him, hard, between the shoulder blades.

 

Manly greeting attended, they break apart, and Ray seeks out Nate, giving him the same treatment.  

 

And then they’re a triangle of tension, four feet to a side.

 

“Fuck this,” Ray says, half to himself, and reaches for his belt.

 

“Stand down, Person,” Nate orders, voice low, tone brooking no argument.  His eyes catch Brad’s, and he says, “Why don’t you get a little more comfortable?”

 

“Jesus, LT, you so hard up for work these days that you’re moonlighting as a porn writer?” Ray asks, and Brad feels the cold in his belly dissipating, his tension starting to seep away.  There’s nothing here he hasn’t heard and seen before.

 

“Seriously, what’s next:  ‘Oh, I don’t think the showerhead is pounding me hard enough.  Can you come help me with that, sir?’”

 

Nate’s smile is fond exasperation mixed with a distant worry that Brad knows he’s put there.  He’s already undone his tie and moved past them toward the closet, which he opens.  There’s a full-length mirror on the inside of the door, and as he shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it up, he’s watching Ray move into Nate’s space, watching his lips brush Nate’s ear as he says something too low for Brad to hear.  Nate’s expression darkens, and he nods, so that the hair of his temple brushes Ray’s cheek.

 

Then Ray is stepping back, moving past Nate toward the desk that shares the corner with the reading chair, and Nate’s eyes are locking onto Brad’s in the mirror.

 

Brad watches him come towards him, concentrates on undoing his belt buckle and sliding the belt free, hooking it over the hanger on which he’s going to put his shirt.  He can feel Nate inches behind him, can look him in the eye in the mirror but not bring himself to turn around.

 

“Is this what you want, Brad?” Nate asks, quiet and solemn and so fucking serious it breaks Brad’s heart.  

 

He half turns toward Nate, hand on the smooth disc of his trouser button, and tries a bluff:  “Isn’t this a little early in the show?  Shouldn’t at least one of us be naked before you ask that question?”

 

But Nate’s wearing that same, patient sniper’s look, and Brad knows an opportunity for strategic retreat when it’s offered.

 

“What else is there?” he asks, and he means it to be light, but it comes out wrong, breaking over the last word and hanging there between them.

 

Nate does him the eternal honor of ignoring the quaver in Brad’s voice and deliberately misunderstands the desperation there.  “We could go out for dinner, see a movie.  Hit a bar after, maybe start a fight with some POGs.”

 

“With Ray along, we’ll probably have that fight at the local Applebee’s and then a reprise at the cineplex,” Brad says, letting a smile make its way to his eyes.

 

“I heard that, you judgmental Viking twat.”

 

They both spare a look for Ray, who seems to be doodling on the hotel notepad.  _Probably a pornographic masterpiece_ , Brad thinks, and suddenly he’s laughing, a little nervously, maybe, but it’s the most his lungs have managed since he woke up on a stretcher with his neck and head on fire and Wanamaker’s screams ringing between his ears.

 

A motion in his peripheral snaps his attention back to Nate, who’s moved in on Brad, reaching for his zipper, apparently having decided that this is, indeed, what Brad wants.

 

When Nate drops to one knee to untie Brad’s regulation shoes, Brad’s breath hitches a little.  The sharp thwap of his garters against his thighs does the trick of refocusing his attention on the here and now, and Nate says, “Lift,” and then, “Lift,” as though Brad were a child needing instruction on how to take off his shoes.

 

That leaves him in black dress socks, briefs, garters, a white regulation tee, and his uniform shirt, open to the waist but still fastened at the bottom hem to the garters, which keep his socks up and his shirt tucked, no matter how often he had to sit and stand during the two-hour funeral service at the church or in the car to the cemetery or when he bent to hand Hedley’s mother the folded flag.

 

Something must go out of his eyes then, because Nate makes a sound and reaches out, sliding his hands under Brad’s shirt to help him out of it, hands warm through the cotton of his tee. The touch grounds him, brings him back to this place and this time, to the fact of Nate solid and whole before him, to the presence of Ray, who’s watching from across the room, drawing forgotten as he drinks in their little passion play.

 

Nate unfastens the garters with expert hands, reaches around Brad for the hanger, hangs up the shirt, strips the tee over Brad’s head, folds it, sets it aside, and then he’s on his knees again, hands running down Brad’s thighs, a teasing, light touch that raises a shiver along his skin.  He removes the garters, rolls them with expert hands, sets them on the floor inside the closet, every motion deliberate and thoughtful, eyes abstracted even as he taps Brad’s calf to indicate he should lift his foot so that Nate can remove one sock and then repeat the same action with the other.  He rolls each sock, puts it in its respective shoe, and then sits back on his heels to look up the length of Brad’s body at him.

 

There’s nothing particularly sexual about the scene.  Nate’s fully clothed, still wearing the leather jacket, and Brad could be turning in for bed if it weren’t for the firm line of his hard cock behind the panel of his briefs and a telltale tenting of Nate’s khakis.

 

“You’re overdressed,” Brad notes, almost casually, nothing seductive in his voice, just an observation as he steps out of his briefs and puts them aside.  

 

Nate nods in agreement.  “I am.”  He stands once more and moves out into the room, far enough to have space to pull his polo off and start working on his khakis.

 

“You, too,” Brad adds for the sake of Ray, who’s finally abandoned his art project in favor of toeing off his sneakers and peeling out of his socks.  He pads barefoot toward them, the ragged cuffs of his jeans trailing on the floor around his feet, and Brad is struck all at once by how vulnerable Ray is, the thin bones, blue veins, slender ankle exposed to harm.

 

He takes in a shuddering breath and tries to shrug off the sudden unease, rolling his shoulders and making a show of reaching for the hem of Ray’s holey tee-shirt.

 

The legend on it catches Brad’s eye, though, stops him cold in his pursuit and startles a bark out of him, the surprised laughter loosening the cold grip of fear around his heart.

 

“You really are a whiskey tango fuck, aren’t you, Ray?”

 

“Don’t you be dissin’ Billy Ray,” he responds, running a loving hand over the faded decal on his tee-shirt.  “The man knows how to sing his pain for the world to hear.”

 

“Man only cries that way when his jeans are strangling his balls,” Brad answers, pulling the shirt over Ray’s head and gunning it behind the fridge.

  
“Hey!  That shirt has sentimental value.  I lost my virginity in the fairgrounds parking lot after that show.”

 

“When you were twenty-three,” Brad adds, as if he’s finishing a story he’s heard a hundred times.

 

“Fuck you,” Ray answers predictably, and Nate mutters, “That’s the general idea,” because someone had to say it.

 

Brad laughs at their give and take, at Nate’s feigned impatience with Ray’s chatter, at the easiness of their movements, Nate skimming out of his briefs and smiling at Brad’s obvious admiration of his bare ass, Ray shimmying out of his jeans and kicking them away.

 

Brad laughs again, because of course Ray was free-balling, and Ray grins like he knows he’s made Brad laugh, and then they’re kissing, Ray’s cock leaving a trail of fire along Brad’s thigh, Brad’s own trapped against Ray’s belly.

 

Just as Ray sucks Brad’s tongue into his mouth, Brad feels Nate come up behind him, running his hand from the nape of Brad’s neck down his spine to the cleft of his ass, where he pauses, his long middle finger teasing at the soft skin at the top of the crease until Brad makes a choked noise and Nate moves on, finger delving further, finding his hole, circling it with that same, teasing finger.

Brad makes another sound, which Ray takes as encouragement to break the kiss, hot breath washing against Brad’s buzzing lips as he murmurs, “The fucking mouth on you,” and then drops to his knees, hands gripping Brad’s thighs just below his ass, mouth sliding wet and hot and perfect around the head of Brad’s cock.

 

Brad resists the urge to fist Ray’s hair, instead palming the back of his head, neither urging nor discouraging Ray’s movements, which brush the head of Brad’s cock against the roof of his mouth with every bob.  The motion rips harsh pants from Brad’s mouth, and he has a moment to wonder if it’s all going to be over too soon when Nate wraps an arm around him, effectively trapping his free arm against his body, and breaches Brad’s hole with the tip of his dry finger.

 

Brad bucks forward involuntarily, overcome by the dual sensations, and Ray takes him, opening his throat with a muffled sound of approval, milking him with swallowing motions that blur Brad’s vision and tear a desperate sound out of him.

 

“No,” Nate says, quiet but definite, and Ray pulls against Brad’s grip on his head, leaves Brad’s cock with a filthy pop, and grins up at Nate.

 

“Want to put your own mouth to good use?” Ray asks, lips slick with saliva, chin dripping.

 

“I want to move this to the bed we paid for,” Nate answers, sounding far too composed for Brad, who’s trying to bring his breathing back under control.

 

He’s almost succeeded when Nate murmurs in his ear, “On your back on the bed, Brad,” and he has to once more gather his will against his desire.

 

He’s not sure he wants it this way, face-to-face, being held in place by Nate, by Ray.  Not sure he can stand it to be tender or careful.  If they’re kind to him, treat him like he’s fragile, he might become so, might break apart and never fit all of the pieces back in place again.  His plane leaves at 0800, and he has to be all together on it.

 

Brad hates being weak.  More than the death he’s recently witnessed, more than grieving mothers and stoic brothers.  More than field hospital personnel with their firm hands and closed-off, thousand-mile looks.  More than strangers in the airport who offer him gratitude for having failed—utterly, spectacularly…fatally—failed to do his job.

 

“Hey,” Nate says, calling Brad back to where he’s paused in his movement, one knee on the bed, back to the others.  

 

Before Nate can say something solicitous, something fucking _understanding_ , Brad crawls onto the bed and rolls onto his back, letting his knees fall open to put himself on shameless display.  He plasters a wicked smile on his stiff face and holds out a hand for Nate, twiddling his fingers to indicate that he should hurry it the fuck up.

 

Ray snorts and crosses around to the opposite side of the bed, and Brad feels the mattress dip as it takes Ray’s weight.  Nate, however, is conspicuously unmoving, eyes steady on Brad’s face, ignoring the impatient gesture of his inviting hand.

 

It isn’t like Nate to force an issue except when it’s very clear that the need outweighs the cost.  

 

He’d seen that in Iraq when Nate had spoken truth to power; seen it when Nate had cornered Brad at Nate’s paddle party, trapping him in the tiny back bedroom of Mike Wynn’s house, said, “Stop,” when Brad had tried to leave the room, said, “Stay,” when that first kiss had sent electrified terror through him;  seen it when, a year or so later, Nate had said, “Ray’s going to join us tonight,” as if a threesome was a requirement, the next obvious step in their life together.

 

Brad knows there’s no escaping what Nate requires.

 

He also knows Nate would never ask of him something he isn’t prepared to give.

 

“Can you—”  he starts, struggling, and Ray spreads his hand out over Brad’s solar plexus, not pressing, just holding, as if to say, _I’ve got you_.

 

“I can’t…” he continues, no more coherent, but Nate gets it, Brad sees him understand that it’s beyond Brad’s frayed and cracking control to ask for anything, and he senses a silent communication between Ray and Nate before Nate adds his weight to the near side of the bed, shifting them all into a tenuous balance, Brad the fulcrum between them.

 

Ray’s hand still pinning him to keep him from spinning away, Nate kneels between Brad’s spread thighs, drifts his fingers lazily through the thatch of hair at his root, traces the seam of thigh and pelvis, fondles his balls and ghosts a finger back to the impossibly sensitive skin behind them.

 

Ray leans down to engage Brad’s mouth in a filthy, all-consuming, wet kiss, his tongue plunging into Brad’s slack mouth, his teeth pulling at Brad’s lower lip.  

 

Brad dimly registers the snapping open of a cap, and then there’s the shocking wetness against his hole and a finger barely giving him pause to gasp into Ray’s hungry mouth before Nate’s pushing a finger inside of him, seeking, finding, stroking another gasp out of him before adding a second finger, opening him.

 

Brad groans his readiness into the air as Ray pulls his mouth away and sits up, crawling toward the head of the bed to straddle Brad’s neck and brush his cock against Brad’s swollen lips.  Ray dips his hips, teasing Brad’s lips with his cock even as Nate pulls his fingers away, leaving him empty and wanting, but only for the time it takes for Nate to replace his fingers with the blunt head of his cock.

 

Even as Brad’s adjusting to Ray’s taste and weight on his tongue, Nate is pushing inexorably into him, Ray matching his pace until he’s bumping against the back of Brad’s throat and Brad is scrambling to relax, adjust, let it happen, eyes watering, nose gusting in the strong scent of Ray, who’s surrounding him, blocking sound from his ears with his thighs, blocking the sight of Nate breaching him.

 

Nate pulls Brad’s knees up, snugs his thighs tight against his hips, and starts a steady rhythm, one that Ray matches, alternating shallow and deep thrusts, forcing Brad to focus only on the overwhelming sensations of the cock in his ass and the one in his mouth, until he’s nothing but the push-pull of it, nothing but the scent of sex, the heavy blood pounding in his ears, the feeling of being full.  He’s taking and taken, given up to what is being given, unable to do anything save wrap one hand around Ray’s lean hip and with the other grip Nate’s hand where it clutches Brad’s thigh.

 

Ray’s rhythm stutters first, his hips pounding faster, cock sliding deeper into Brad’s open throat, and he says, “Fuck, Brad, fucking suck my cock dry,” and then he’s spurting down Brad’s throat.  Nate’s thrusts grow erratic as Ray pulls out, and then Ray is licking his own spunk out of Brad’s mouth as Nate thrusts a final time and stutters his release, a string of curses and Brad’s name and love nonsense all mixed up together in a litany more fitting for them than any prayer.

 

There’s a momentary tableau, each of them frozen except for broken breaths, and then Nate eases Brad’s legs to the bed, slips out of him, and maneuvers so that he can lay a kiss at the base of Brad’s cock, which is half hard again with all the stimulation.  

 

Nate says, “You want?” but Brad shakes his head.  He doesn’t want anything, doesn’t need anything.  His brain is a numb buzz of white noise, his limbs heavy with satiation, and the pleasant heaviness of desire is only a warm curl at the base of his spine, holding him in place with the promise of later.

 

Ray settles beside him on his left, where he belongs, and Nate to his right and half covering him, hand splayed over Brad’s chest, which is rising and falling at a slower pace as he slips into the first true sleep he’s hand in months.  A kiss below his left ear is the closest Ray will come to words he never says except in jest.

 

A breath against his throat, over the scar that marks his near-miss, is the last word Nate will offer on what they all almost lost.

 

Under the cover of his brothers, Brad at last rests, closing eyes and mind against the coming of the morning.  There’s time enough for grief, he knows.  It can wait.

 

Here and now, what he’s got is all he needs.


End file.
